The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

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Richard Scudder was the longtime partner of Dean Singleton in Media News Group and its efforts to make money in the twilight of print journalism. They were controversial in the business for scrimping on resources at some papers even as they poured them into others, such as the Denver Post. Now the senior of the two, a longtime New Jerseyan, has died at age 99 even as the print medium itself looks ever more mortal.

Ultimately, neither they nor nearly anyone else in newspapers found a way to hold off the tide. But their efforts, in California particularly as I described them in this 1997 article for Forbes (apologies for the poor web reproduction, which dropped quote marks and includes other typos), were an interesting strategy. They figured they could group geographically and consolidate costs--every little paper didn't need to do its own movie reviews, for example. If the industry had employed some of these principles earlier, back when it had flush margins, it might have been able to invest in innovations that could sustain better journalism today.

Anyway, that's newsprint already off the presses. But Scudder was an unusual character, of the sort that newspapering once was full of. He will be part of a rich history.